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A Chicago Cocktail Crawl

Left to right: Tropic Thunder at the Aviary; Last Light at Scofflaw; and Box Lunch at Billy Sunday.Credit
John Gress for The New York Times

Chicago bars have a way with a resonant cultural reference.

One is named after a late-1800s White Sox outfielder turned temperance evangelist. A cocktail pioneer in another part of the same neighborhood is named after a renowned street photographer. A 10-minute walk away is a gin-centric bar whose name comes from a word coined to describe those who drank illegally during Prohibition. And popping up in unexpected places is the name of Nelson Algren, the author of “The Man With the Golden Arm,” and perhaps most pertinently, “Chicago, City on the Make.”

Cocktail bars across the country are pouring the past (resurrected recipes, speakeasy motifs, barkeeps with Smith Brothers beards) and earnestly so. In Chicago, some of the most engaging bars seem to specialize in what could best be described as studious fun. The history lessons come with a lilt, and the innovation with an intense enthusiasm.

Logan Square, on the northwest side of Chicago, is a locus of interesting, grown-up drinking. An excellent base camp from which to explore the area (and beyond) is Longman & Eagle, a restaurant and bar where travelers can also book a diligently designed room upstairs. (The bar is a fine place to have a Root & Rye cocktail made with root tea, Rittenhouse rye and the mellow, wine-based amaro called Cardamaro.)

Algren never slept here — it opened in 2010, 29 years after his death — but some of his words live on a Longman & Eagle wall, much-quoted lines from the novel “A Walk on the Wild Side”: “Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom’s. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own.”

“It certainly was not without a sense of humor, naming a cocktail bar after a gentleman who spent the majority of his life preaching against the evils of alcohol,” said Alex Bachman, the bartender at the animated spot across from the square that gave the neighborhood its name.

But it wasn’t necessarily intended to mock, either: “One thing I definitely admired was, he had a great conviction to what he believed in,” Mr. Bachman said. (Then again, Billy Sunday the outfielder had a lifetime batting average of .248.)

Billy Sunday the bar can be winningly cheeky: The savory Box Lunch — made with goat’s milk; oats and spices like mace and cinnamon; palo cortado sherry; and Génépi wormwood liqueur — is served in a small milk bottle complete with striped straw. The food menu includes a category called Things in Jars (the oven-roasted tomatoes are top-notch). The playlist assembled by John Byron, the floor manager, features welcome Dylan (“Changing of the Guards”) and a wonderfully weird cover of “Crimson and Clover” by the Chilean band Aguaturbia.

There is a nod to Algren here as well, with a sprightly cocktail called the Algren Sling — New Western gin, pineapple, Three Pins herbal liqueur, lemon and Angostura bitters accented with cherries. It is served in a cup made of a coconut shell (“Dried and polished but very much real,” Mr. Bachman said).

“I’ve always had a deep appreciation for Nelson Algren, how he wrote about Chicago,” said Mr. Bachman, who grew up on the North Side and whose résumé includes work in the beverage program at the restaurant of the late Charlie Trotter. “I would never go as far as to say that he would drink Singapore Slings during his life, but it’s just a tip of the hat to him in the small way that we could.”

Photo

Charles Joly of the Aviary.Credit
John Gress for The New York Times

Mr. Bachman’s point of pride is the back bar’s bottles of amaro and fernet, and it shows in his breakdown of the invigorating, biting drink called the Victorian, created here. “We wanted to showcase a spirit-forward cocktail that embraced a lot of the herbal components of amaro, so we used gin — the great botanical spirit that it is — as a vehicle to carry that very deep herbaceous character of the amaro and fernet Angelico,” he said.

The gin is Damrak, the amaro Erborista and they’re joined by bitters made in-house with wormwood, “one of the primary components of many amaro,” Mr. Bachman said. Also in the mix is Billy Sunday’s sirop de capillaire — “that’s a wonderful throwback, I think, to classic cocktail culture. Essentially it’s a heavy syrup made from sugar and maidenhair fern; the syrup on its own almost has an Earl Grey, sort of bergamot tealike quality to it.

“It’s a very small component of the cocktail,” Mr. Bachman said. “It’s only a quarter of an ounce. But not to diminish its importance, it plays a great role there.”

Alex Huebner bought a 1906 corner tavern, gut-renovated it (“I spent a lot of time on the ladder”), kept the massive vintage icebox (“There was no possible way to move that”) and the long-lived back bar (he is pretty sure it’s a Brunswick), added a shuffleboard table and a classic photo booth and in 2006 opened Weegee’s Lounge in what was then the less traveled western edge of Logan Square.

The name came naturally. Mr. Huebner is a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he had “a focus on documentary photography.” The work of Arthur Fellig, the photographer known as Weegee, was studied in some of his classes “and I just fell in love with him.”

Weegee worked for a number of New York newspapers, most notably The Daily Mirror and PM, and his photos (many of them of crime scenes), in the words of the critic Luc Sante, “never lie, cheat or condescend to their public.” Several of those photos are displayed on the walls of Mr. Huebner’s lounge.

Mr. Huebner, who owns the bar with his wife, Lynne Marrs, said that his part of Logan Square was a rough one when he opened his bar “so the Weegee concept was a little representational. Since that time the neighborhood has had an amazing rehabilitation.”

Still, Weegee’s continues to do the kind of things it did when it was on the cocktail frontier: It makes its own sour mix and ginger syrup, brandies its own cherries and offers a wide-ranging roster of beers (more than 100), many of them from small brewers like Three Floyds and Tyranena.

“I don’t like the working part so much; I love hanging out,” he said. “Hopefully one of these days we’ll get to the point where I can just sit at the bar and hold court.”

3659 West Armitage Avenue; 773-384-0707. Cocktails, $6 to $12.

Scofflaw

Friday night is festive at Scofflaw in Logan Square. It’s crowded, sure, but there’s room to stand and talk. The drinks are delivered promptly and they’re terrific, especially the Last Light (local Letherbee gin, ginger syrup, egg white, lemon and Cherry Heering). The music is right: Buddy Holly, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles.

But one thing that won’t happen anytime soon is landing a table. There is a host at the door but seating is watch and wait for an opening (here’s where Mike Singletary and rest of the 1985 Bears would be helpful). After a first attempt that involved a 90-minute wait, my family and friends and I returned on a Monday, when it’s a different story. There is still energy, along with plenty of tables and time to appreciate the place: big windows looking onto Armitage Avenue, tin ceiling, comfortable seating.

The food is first-rate — the burger, the gemelli pasta with caponata — and the drinks consistent: One of the cocktail highlights of the night was the Sly Devil, with Scofflaw Old Tom gin (made in partnership with North Shore Distillery; osthmanthus blossoms give it a floral character), chai syrup, lime and Maurin Quina, the liqueur made with fortified wine, cherries and quinine.

Gin, said Danny Shapiro, is the reason “the four us — Chris Nagy, Andy Gould, Mandy Tandy and myself — decided to open Scofflaw” in 2012. (The term won a contest in the 1920s to describe those who flouted the 18th Amendment.)

Gin may be the favored spirit, but the bar also has a real commitment to craft beer; five from Victory in Pennsylvania were on tap late last fall.

And then there’s Malort, the rudely bitter wormwood liqueur that has a hardy band of adherents in Chicago. Scofflaw serves two — Letherbee and, on tap, the enduring Jeppson’s.

Bernard’s, hidden away in a corner on the second floor of the sleek Waldorf-Astoria hotel in the Gold Coast neighborhood, is indisputably good-looking. The discreet front door is leather. The walls are suede. The wingback chairs look and feel plush. The colors of the place would be right at home in a deluxe See’s chocolate sampler.

The cocktails served here, to the accompaniment of Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald, work with the room: the Treat of Kings with Capel pisco, pineapple, Lillet Blanc and soda; the Terroir with St. George Terroir gin, North Shore aquavit, vermouth and Combier triple sec. The menu changes regularly, as it does at many bars.

The bar makes its own bitters and syrups, and the beer list can feature small Illinois brewers like Finch’s and Metropolitan.

The Simeone Deary Design Group intended for Bernard’s to be something of a “secret” space, and a recent early evening fit that description; an hour or so later, a group of business bros offered a livelier presence.

A good hotel bar is never undiscovered, but it can count as an escape.

11 East Walton Street; 312-646-1300. Cocktails, $14.

The Aviary

The essence of the Aviary can be found in a drink called the Tropic Thunder and the vessel that contains it.

Photo

Inside Scofflaw.Credit
John Gress for The New York Times

The cylindrical glass piece — it looks like a transparent old-time film canister — from the Chicago designer Martin Kastner is called the porthole, and it is a handsome showcase not only for the ingredients but for how the cocktail will change over time.

The Aviary, a 15-minute cab ride from Logan Square in the West Loop, is a whoop-de-do. It is owned by the chef Grant Achatz and his partner, Nick Kokonas, who also own the celebrated Chicago restaurants Alinea and Next (which is next door to the Aviary). It has two ice chefs on staff (making flavored ices, carving spheres). Beers are made in collaboration with brewers like Evil Twin and Mikkeller. Reservations are advised (and are made online, with a deposit).

None of this makes for a solemn or intimidating experience. There is verve in a space that is all inviting curves and corners.

The cocktail called the Ford’s Model Tea Party — with Ford’s gin, Old Pulteney Scotch and Atsby Armadillo Cake vermouth, Mandarine Napoleon and Sicilian blood orange tea — is served in a china cup while a teapot is there to provide a.) a distinct tea aroma and b.) a memorable visual.

The Aviary has its nostalgia sip in the School Lunch, with the flavors of peanuts, curry and chocolate teaming with Lemon Hart 151 rum. It is served in a clear glass replica of a milk carton and is delivered in a Masters of the Universe lunchbox.

“The cocktails should be fun,” said Mr. Joly, who gained notice at Chicago’s Drawing Room before he joined the Aviary last year. “I really do look at the bar as hosting a party every day.”

To that end, the waiters are witty (“The Albino Jaguar,” one said with a flourish while serving the drink. “It’s purple!”) and the music is particularly well chosen (the Brooklyn band Small Black, the Los Angeles soul singer Banks).

It’s evident that considerable thought goes into every aspect of the Aviary, but it never seems like an intellectual exercise. The cocktails are calibrated and complex; they are also, to use a straightforward word, tasty.

“I definitely do my homework and I definitely absorb as much information as I can,” Mr. Joly said. “That being said, when I’m creating cocktails I really don’t feel overly geeky about it.”

In fact, he said, he tries to keep drinks at the Aviary as simple as he can, although, he conceded, there’s almost always one ingredient — a gelée, a syrup — that people are not going to make at home.